PhotoMonth London 2025 will establish its central hub at the Arts Pavilion in Mile End Park, hosting four simultaneous exhibitions. The festival's flagship presentation is a group exhibition titled 'Longing,' curated through an open call process by the festival's Curatorial Advisory Board, consisting of Monica Allende, Avijit Datta, Cherelle Sappleton, Fiona Shields, and Charan Singh.
The exhibition features diverse photographic works exploring themes of longing, identity, and human connection. Shreya Jakhar's 'Beyond Boundaries' documents her maternal grandmother's quiet resilience within a patriarchal Indian society. The project follows her grandmother, who defied cultural norms by moving to Mandawa, a small town in Rajasthan, to care for her ailing mother despite societal taboos against married women returning to their parental homes. As the eldest of seven siblings, the grandmother faced emotional isolation and societal judgment while bearing her duties in silence, embodying unconditional love through daily routines of caregiving, household management, and navigating land disputes.
Jay Lim presents 'Singapo-ren Love,' exploring his identity as a gay Singaporean Chinese man through experiences of love, intimacy, and belonging. Created between London and Singapore, the series navigates relationship tensions within families and romantic partnerships, using the framework of inscrutability to communicate gay experiences outside dominant narratives. The images depict familiar Singaporean scenes including cafe dates, holiday getaways, and family gatherings, employing specific compositional choices as camouflage. The work expands into a photobook featuring notes, letters, recipes, and memorabilia, creating a personal archive of queer life and a visual language for feeling, remembering, and resisting.
Syd Shelton's 'A Doctor's Story 1980-1990, Some Lives-David Widgery' documents the late Dr. David Widgery, known as 'The Doc' to East London residents. Born in 1947 and a polio epidemic survivor, Widgery became a beloved general practitioner serving patients at Dr. Liebson's surgery in Bethnal Green and the Gill Street practice in Limehouse. Shelton photographed many of Widgery's patients during home visits before the doctor's untimely death in 1991. The work captures Widgery's dedication to the NHS and his understanding that diseases were often rooted in poor housing, poverty, and racism plaguing East London.
Oliver Woods contributes 'Dad Side of the Bed' from his series 'You Are My One and Only,' photographing his childhood home following his parents' deaths. The work explores his relationship with his parents after losing his younger brother and sister to an ultra-rare genetic condition. His mother's phrase 'You are my one and only' represented the delicate balance between love and loss as he became an only child, no longer the eldest. Through examining every aspect of the house, Woods searches for identity and a sense of self, ultimately expressing his former role as a brother.
Melanie Issaka's 'Blueprint 16' from 'Blueprint: Black Skin, White Mask' explores the emotional and political terrain of longing for belonging, rootedness, and recognition in spaces where Black bodies are often seen as out of place. Drawing from Frantz Fanon's 'Black Skin, White Masks,' the work examines the psychological consequences of colonialism, racialization, and internalized oppression within British society. Using cyanotype processes that render the artist's body as a white void on blue fabric, the prints visualize the paradox of being both hypervisible and invisible, questioning how Blackness is constructed within Western frameworks.
Eliska Sky presents 'Miri and Kazuki' from 'The Red String,' inspired by love and connection regardless of cultural background, religion, appearance, or physical ability. Based on the Japanese legend of the Red String of Fate, the series captures couples, families, siblings, and friends from diverse backgrounds in London. According to the legend, an invisible red thread connects those destined to meet regardless of circumstances, symbolizing unbreakable human bonds. The work celebrates human connection through intimate portraits capturing love's inclusivity in various forms.
Reshma Teelar's 'My Blossoming Graveyards' confronts body image struggles and societal pressures. The artist reflects on childhood experiences of body shaming, from receiving empty plates at age five for being plump to receiving cruel prizes from classmates and restrictive measures from family. The project, begun nine years ago, represents a healing process and an attempt to achieve normalcy while facing fears and exposing personal truths. The work encourages acceptance of self in an imperfect world.
Margaux Revol's 'Augustine and Dido' from 'The Pain Fugue' documents Augustine, a woman in her twenties living with debilitating endometriosis, a chronic illness affecting one in ten women yet often invisible and misdiagnosed. The series captures Augustine's confined existence, spending most days lying down with her world limited to bed, bath, and sofa. The title refers to Augustine's description of her flare-ups as dissociative episodes where time blurs under layers of agony. Through intimate portraits of her pain-confined life and scarred body, the work creates space for concrete yet poetic representations of chronic illness and the longing for relief.
Marcos Azulay concludes with 'God's Garden,' exploring gardens as symbols of humanity's longing for connection with the sacred. From the Garden of Eden to Islamic paradise visions, gardens represent ideal worlds of purity, peace, and divine presence in various traditions. The work presents gardens as both origin and aspiration, spaces where spiritual and earthly realms meet, serving as reminders that paradise exists not only in the past but as a present possibility where beauty becomes a path to the divine.
More information about PhotoMonth London 2025 is available at PhotoMonth.co.uk and through their Instagram account.
